Out for Justice (1991) Biography, Plot, Production, Box office, Scene.

Out for Justice (1991)

Out for Justice is a 1991 American neo-noir action film directed by John Flynn, and produced by and starring Steven Seagal. He plays Gino, a veteran police detective who sets out to avenge his partner Bobby’s murder by killing Richie, the trigger-happy, drug-addicted mafioso culprit. The film was released theatrically on April 12, 1991.

Plot.

Gino Felino is an NYPD detective from Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, who has strong ties within his neighborhood. Gino and his partner Bobby Lupo wait to bust up a multimillion-dollar drug deal, but Gino sees a pimp violently assaulting one of his girls and intervenes. Shortly afterward, Richie Madano murders Bobby in broad daylight in front of his wife, Laurie, and his two children. Richie is a crack addict who grew up with Gino and Bobby. He has become psychotic and homicidal due to rage and drug use, and seems not to care about the consequences of his actions. Richie then murders a woman at a traffic stop because she abruptly tells him to move his car. He heads off into Brooklyn alongside his goons, who are horrified by what he does, but continue to work alongside him. Gino knows that Richie is not going to leave the neighborhood. Ronnie Donziger, his captain, gives him the clearance for a manhunt and provides him with a shotgun and an unmarked car. Gino visits his mob connection Frankie and his boss Don Vittorio, and he tells them he will not get out of the way of their own plans to take out Richie,

whom they view as a loose cannon. While driving, Gino sees a fellow driver discard something moving from his car. Upon investigating, Gino rescues an abandoned German Shepherd puppy. Gino starts the hunt for Richie at a bar run by Richie’s brother Vinnie Madano. Vinnie and his friends all refuse to provide information, so Gino beats up a number of them. He still does not find out where Richie is, but his concern about getting an attitude problem has been taken care of. Gino attempts to get Richie out of hiding by arresting his sister Pattie and by talking to his estranged, elderly father. Afterwards, Gino and his wife, Vicky, who are in the middle of a divorce, decide not to get one and reconcile, but they, along with their son, Tony, are attacked by Richie’s men when they storm into their apartment. Gino, however, manages to kill them all and save his wife and son. Richie later comes back to the bar and beats up Vinnie for not killing Gino when the situation was one cop against a bar full of armed men. He also has information leaked to the mob that he is at the bar, then emerges from hiding and ambushes the mob’s hitmen in a shoot-out.

Production.

John Flynn later claimed the original title was The Price of Our Blood, “meaning Mafia blood. That was the title that Steven and I wanted, but Warner Bros. said no. It had to be a three-word title like the other Steven Seagal films (Above the Law, Hard to Kill, and Marked for Death).” The movie was originally much longer and included more plot and characters. Steven Seagal cut some of William Forsythe’s scenes because he felt that Forsythe was upstaging him. Also, Warner Bros. brought in editor Michael Eliot to re-edit the original cut of the movie so that it would be shorter and more profitable at the box office. Eliot did the same job on a few other Warner Bros. movies – Wes Craven’s sci-fi horror Deadly Friend (1986) and Mark L. Lester’s action movie Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991).

Some scenes were deleted and some others were cut for pacing, so two montage scenes with no dialogue are in the movie. Re-editing also caused some minor continuity mistakes. The theatrical trailer shows two deleted scenes: Richie shooting inside a clothing store from which he took a new shirt (in his first few scenes, he is wearing one shirt, then all of a sudden he is wearing another shirt for the rest of the movie), and a scene where the police captain tells Gino that body count is going up. Some TV versions of the movie included two deleted scenes: Richie stealing the new shirt from store because his got blood on it (also seen in trailer), and Richie and his guys breaking into the house where Gino’s wife is and trying to find her, but leaving when some neighbors show up.

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Box office.

The movie debuted at number one at the box office. This was the third straight Seagal movie to do so the U.S. box office on its opening weekend. In the United States, the film grossed $40 million, falling short of the box-office receipts of his last release, Marked for Death.